Gabor Harsanyi, The Master Of Silence - on Conscious TV

Below is the transcription of Gabor Harsanyi's interview on Conscious TV, which has been included in the book "Conversations on Awakening" By Iain and Renate McNay

Conscious TV is a UK based TV channel broadcasting on the Internet and on various Satellite channels in the UK. Their quest is to stimulate debate, question, inquire, inform, enlighten, encourage and inspire people in the areas of Consciousness, Science, Non-Duality and Spirituality. They have launched in the spring of 2008 and since then have made over 400 programs among which are interviews with teachers such as Adyashanti, Mooji, Gangaji, Rupert Spira, Byron Katie and many more."

Iain: And Gabor is a Master of Silence. I think that’s a wonderful title, and we’re going to find out how he became a Master of Silence. He has really quite a story to tell. He’s lived quite a life and he’s been through a lot of things, and we’re going to get a feel of that and also, obviously, a feel of where he is these days. So, Gabor, you were living in Hungary when there was the 1956 uprising, when the Russian tanks came in. That must have been very hard for you.

Gabor: Yes. Most of my childhood was spent in an upheaval type of situation. I remember when I was really, really young, I was three years old, and there were flowers and plants next to our house, and I used to walk and be at total peace. And then, after that, a lot of troubles started. All kinds of trouble – the 1956 revolution came, and my father was part of that uprising, so we were pushed back and forth, back and forth. All kinds of emotions came up, all kinds of emotions. And then the revolution was beaten down, and my father was taken in and out of jail for a few years after 1956. So that was really dramatic and emotionally shaking. It was an emotional shake-up.

Iain: And how do you remember that peace that you found when you were with the plants?

Gabor: It’s not in memory. It’s not in my mental memory. It is in some kind of other memory. There was this nurturing wonderful feeling that I felt at home between the plants and the grass. And very early I was wondering, “What am I doing here? Why are all these people so weird?”

Iain: So you didn’t fit in somehow.

Gabor: No. I didn’t fit in at all.

Iain: Ok. And when you got a little older you decided that you didn’t want to stay any longer in Hungary.

Gabor: Yes. Well, when I was in Hungary, I was dreaming of going to America, and what America represented at that time was freedom. And I didn’t know that what I was after was inner freedom. That concept was not even available to me. I guess I just wanted the chain to be looser, or I wanted the chain to be made of gold, let’s say. So, I was really desperately going for freedom, freedom, freedom! As to what it represented to me at that time – being able to travel, have enough money and do what you want kind of thing. That’s when I escaped. I spent six month in a refugee camp in Italy.

Iain: Were you on your own when you escaped, or were you with some friends?

Gabor: I was with another person, and basically, it was the two of us who attempted to escape.

Iain: It must have been hard to leave your family.

Gabor: Yes. Yes, it was extremely hard. There was something inside me that yanked me out, if I may use that expression. There was some kind of power that helped me to make it. There was not much planning. It just happened. So the desire, the vision, actually happened – getting out and being free.

Iain: So practically, you had to go through Yugoslavia.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: Then you mentioned you were in Italy.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: So you were walking, basically, were you?

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: And Yugoslavia then – although it was Tito in power - it was still a communist country.

Gabor: Yes. It was still communist at that time. It was easier to cross from Yugoslavia to Italy than, let’s say, from Hungary to Austria.

Iain: Yes.

Gabor: So I decided to take that route. And I escaped from Koper, which was in Yugoslavia, to Italy, the side that’s called Trieste.

Iain: And was that journey dangerous?

Gabor: Yes. Very dangerous. It was very dangerous. They were actually shooting, and dogs were running after us and stuff like that.

Iain: Wow!

Gabor: Very dramatic, again.

Iain: Wow! Yes.

Gabor: Even to remember it is kind of weird, you know.

Iain: But you were determined to make it

Gabor: I was determined to make it. I was running, running, running, running, and I walked, oh, I don’t know… about 60 Kilometers from the boarder to Trieste. Then I registered with the police. For two days I didn’t know what to do, so I lived in a telephone booth. I didn’t know what to do. I was 18 with lots of testosterone, but with lots of fear also. I didn’t know what’s going to happen, “Are they going to ship me back to Hungary? Are they going to accept me? What’s going to happen?”

So, after a couple of days I went to the police, and they took me to a refugee camp where I spent six months.

Iain: And, of course, now in Europe we have so many refugees. This is 2016 and there are so many refugees coming to Europe. So, in a way, your experience then is similar to what the refugees are experiencing now.

Gabor: Yes. And certainly my escape and my troubles were really nothing in comparison to what’s happening to those people right now. I didn’t have a child to carry. I was on my own. I was 18. And also, there were very few refugees.

Iain: Ok.

Gabor: Italy didn’t have to deal with 10,000 of them a day.

Iain: Yes.

Gabor: So I was extremely fortunate to escape at that time and that I was a refugee at that time. I was well treated, and they didn’t have the current refugee problems that they have now.

Iain: I understand. Yeah. So then you were able to get from Italy to Canada.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: And I guess you flew there and somehow that was financed.

Gabor: Yes. I flew to Canada. I landed and basically I ran out of the plane and said, “Ok, here I am come. I am ambitious. What do I have to do to become successful?” Success meant financial success.

Iain: Yes.

Gabor: I didn’t care really what I had to do… within reason. And so reasonably quickly I became very successful financially, because that’s really all I wanted, totally believing that that’s what is going to give me the freedom that I was looking for.

Iain: Yes, but how did you do that? Here you are coming… you are a refugee… presumably your English was not that good. You get to a foreign country and pretty quickly you become a multi-millionaire.

Gabor: Yeah. By the time I was thirty.

Iain: So how did you actually do that? I mean, truly, how can you do that so quickly in a foreign country?

Gabor: I would call that “creative stupidity.” I was not educated enough to know what won’t work. I quickly learned English. I worked for a British company for a couple of years – Gestetner – at that time. I was the only immigrant kid, so you can imagine how many jokes they made about me and things like that. I went to university. I took electronics engineering, but I never got a job. I immediately went into real estate. And I bought and sold, and I bought and sold land. I bought and sold land at the time that other people didn’t, because the interest rates were so high. So I had no idea why I couldn’t succeed. If there was a secret to that success it was: I didn’t know I can’t.

Iain: You had nothing to lose.

Gabor: I had nothing to lose. I didn’t know what accounting meant. I used to think that “net-worth” was perhaps ladies stockings or something like that.

Iain: (laughter)

Gabor: And so, the initial success was really raw trial and not thinking much about it.

Iain: Ok. So, you got this success. You’re a multi-millionaire. In the notes that you gave me it said you got married to a beautiful woman and you had three children.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: Everything in life seemed wonderful.

Gabor: Yes. Life was wonderful – great success, lots of money, lots of parties, the best cars, etc., etc. – just how I imagined success to be. Success meaning freedom. And yes, there was some freedom within reason, but when you make parties and have thousands of friends, they were really mainly acquaintances. The true friends didn’t exist at that time. I didn’t know who was, or who wasn’t, my friend. And so I used to go home every night and I used to drink two bottles of wine just to calm my nerves and to be able to go to sleep. Something was missing. Even though I was “successful,” something was really missing. I had not yet gotten what I was looking for, which was freedom, but I had interpreted freedom as financial success.

Iain: Yes. So did you have, at that point, a feeling of what might lead to real freedom? Or, were you just in this position where you realized that what you’ve done wasn’t going to work, or wasn’t working?

Gabor: Yeah. Knowing something was missing, I didn’t know quite what the solution was, but I turned to so-called spirituality. I had seen a video tape at the time of Ramtha, and as soon as I saw it I thought, “Ok, this is exactly what I want to know.” It was again such a power in me, such a desire to go and learn that. “That’s what I want to know. That’s kind of what’s missing. That’s the direction I need to go.”

So I shifted directions. And the universe was very helpful and kind to me in shifting directions. At the same time I lost all my money, all my friends.

Iain: This was the ‘97 financial crash… I can’t remember…

Gabor: Early 1990’s… 89… 90

Iain: ’89, yeah. But also you had studied some martial arts, like Karate, Kong Fu, and Kick Boxing. So you had some idea of how you could at least have some energy in the body to generate that kind of spiritual energy through the body, I guess.

Gabor: I know that now. At that time I did not know that, in my martial arts training they taught me something very basic that was extremely useful later on. But, since I knew it in the martial arts context, I did not know that that’s going to be the key ingredient later on for being in the body or having the inner peace. That came much later. And, of course, I did a lot of martial arts because, again, I wanted freedom and I wanted to protect myself. I was a very sensitive “soul,” so I wanted to protect myself with martial arts, lots of money, better lawyers, etc., etc.

Iain: So you saw the martial arts as an outer success, in a way, protecting the outer success.

Gabor: Outer success and protection.

Iain: Yes. Ok. So you mentioned that you were pulled by Ramtha and I think at that time… just checking my notes… and, of course, you had to leave your family for that.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: Wasn’t that difficult to leave your family and your children?

Gabor: The hardest thing to do in my entire life is that. Escaping from Hungary and doing all the other things - even depression - were not nearly as hard as that. Something, again, yanked me out and placed me in the West Coast of the USA. I started to live in a forest, very quietly, and every moment, every day, there was this mental emotional challenge about my family. “I should be with my family. I should be with my family.” So, that was the hardest decision I ever had to make.

Iain: So you wanted to say “no” to civilization somehow.

Gabor: Exactly.

Iain: So you were actually living in a forest. You were living in a hut or something. You weren’t actually living in the open in a forest, were you?

Gabor: No. I actually build a small log cabin out of the trees that were there. I was totally self-sufficient with my own electricity and I had my own garden. I had food storage and stuff like that. So, I turned from so-called “syphilization” to a whole different direction. At least that’s what I thought.

Iain: You were very resourceful to do that on your own, and to build your own place in the forest and survive.

Gabor: Yes. I had lots of help. In a community like that there’s lots of help available. I met the most interesting wonderful people, who were very different, who were very supportive to have that kind of life style.

Iain: So what do you feel was changing in you at that time?

Gabor: In retrospect, what was changing was, I substituted one ego need – money - to another ego need - “I am now spiritual.” I said “goodbye” to civilization and “I am now a better person… slightly better than you, because I am now spiritual and I am going in this direction.” I didn’t know that at that time, but in retrospect, that really is what it was. “Now I am collecting data and information.” Instead of collecting information about how to make more money, I was collecting information with respect to spirituality – different types of meditation, different types of knowledge - the unseen, the chakras, and on and on and on…

Iain: So, in a way, something at your core wasn’t actually changing or wasn’t challenged at that point.

Gabor: Yeah. What has shifted was, that a different type of ego developed. I still had the male ego and I had all those wonderful experiences with Ramtha – all those meditations and breathing exercises that made you feel so good. So, I was absolutely sure that, “I’m on the right track now.”

Before, I used to feel good about my success. “Oh, I got this done!” Now I felt, “Oh, when is the next seminar? When is the next retreat?” So, for a while it felt so good, so powerful. I didn’t know that I was still in the duality swing. Something felt so good, but then it goes away. Again, something felt so good, “Oh, this must be the right track, because I now have a kundalini experience. I am crying and laughing at the same time. That must be it.” The amazing euphoria that followed some of the exercises… it was amazing… for days!

So I was absolutely sure that that was it. That was the right track. There’s no right or wrong track. I’m just saying that that path is not the way to awakening, because you are still in the duality swing.

Iain: So, at that time, you felt that, because you had the highs, you were on the right path. So, how did the questioning start to take effect? How did you start to realize that you probably or possibly were not on the right path?

Gabor: I didn’t question it and I didn’t know that I was on the right path or on the wrong path. It was: I had an experience of business, and something was missing. I had an experience of spirituality - which I know means different things to different people - and I was not aware that there was anything else. There is this direction and there is that direction and something was definitely missing. I started to have depression. I started to be interested in other things now – other teachers, other meditation techniques. Also, I started building a condominium building with a friend in Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. So I got involved with a construction project in Mexico. If you are unprepared, I don’t recommend it to anyone.

So, things started to change. I made moves again, not knowing where I am going or what, but something was still missing.

Iain: So you mentioned depression. What form did the depression take?

Gabor: It lasted for about 12 years altogether.

Iain: 12 years. That’s a long time.

Gabor: Yeah. I had to function while I was depressed. Hardly anyone ever noticed, but it was a feeling of – I get up in the morning and I don’t want to live. Sometimes I bicycled to the beach, in one of the most beautiful areas of the world. I “should” be happy, right? (Gabor shakes his head “no”)

“Perhaps I should drive under the bus?” I mean, I had all those weird thoughts. So, the questioning of my own existence came into effect with the depression. Looking at it from my eyes now, the existential shake-up was necessary for me to even consider awakening. It is an existential shake-up. Depression is a very good existential shake-up. You just don’t want to exist. So, now we are getting close to existence. So I think that’s how the universe guided me to the existential question.

Iain: But did you see a way out of the depression at the time?

Gabor: No. I thought that that’s just the way it is. I tried to get help here and there and everywhere, but the help I got was very temporarily helpful. One of the things I did was – I was fortunate enough to spend three and a half months with an Indian tribe in the Amazon in Ecuador. I took a trip to Ecuador and someone introduced me to a shaman of a tribe. And, although he didn’t speak Spanish or English, he gave me permission to stay with them. By that time I was doing construction in Mexico, I had depression, so I had a lot of stress plus depression. Something was pulling me to be there.

My first impression was amazing. I woke up the first morning scratching like crazy because of the bugs. I was not used to the environment. The people were just sitting there. Just sitting. I was the only one – with all my spiritual experience and knowledge – that was pretending to be sitting. I was sitting, but inside my mind was going, “When am I going to learn something? Where is this going? When am I going to be initiated? Whoo… whoo!! (laughter) So I can tell my friends, ‘Whoo… whoo… I was initiated.’”

And after a week or so, the shaman took pity on me and made me some ayahuasca tea. I took that twice a week for three weeks and that helped me to calm down totally. I still couldn’t just “be” like the rest of them and just sit. I still had anticipation. They were actually sitting with no anticipation, no expectation, nothing. I still had some expectation of the future, “I wonder what’s next! I wonder what knowledge someone is going to impart to me.” And, so, finally I was able to relax and stay with them, and be there. I could actually be there rather than think of something else.

The major, major, major realization for me was that: in spite of all my “knowledge” about spirituality and many, many, many meditation techniques, many, many things – I didn’t know anything. They knew something that I didn’t. I didn’t know what it was or how it was. I thought it was some kind of co-incidence, but that left a major question in my heart called, “Ok, I tried this, I tried that. There are these people who know nothing and I know everything, so how come they can just sit and I can’t?”

Iain: So, the bottom line was that they were happy and you weren’t happy.

Gabor: Well, you could call it that way. They were able to just “be.” In the meantime, of course, I am having my existential shake-up with the depression. So, knowing that I don’t know was very helpful. I was giving up on life, basically. The depression lasted so long. It took a toll on my body, my relationship, everything. And one day I was walking on the beach, and I just sat down and I remembered the martial arts tactic that I learned when I was in my 20’s. When I received the so-called black belt, my teacher taught me how to be in the body, because we were demonstrating things to the public. For example, you can hold your arm out, and if you are inside your arm, they will not be able to bend the arm, or it will be very hard.

Those were the martial arts demonstrations that we were doing. And so, I remembered how to do that. It was easy because I learned how to do it then. So I said, “Ok, let me try that.” Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is within,” and “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all else shall be added unto you.”

I said, “Ok, I tried all those things, so why not look inside, really? I actually know how. So, ok!” And then the mind says, “No, no, no, no… hold on… you’ve got to try that too (pointing away), because that’s more exciting.”

(Me) “No, no… I’m going to try this going inside...”

(Mind) “No, no, no, no… you must try first (pointing away)… let’s go back to Ramtha and learn such and such… go to that level… and when you go to that level, then you try….”

Gabor: Yeah, within. I didn’t know what the hell was within. What’s within? Within what? So, in my desperation and in my existential shake-up, in the midst of the existential shake-up - being close to existence - I go look inside. And looking inside is not a visionary thing, where you can say, “Ok, I am imagining looking inside.” It’s a feeling. It’s a sensing of the inner body’s nurturing. There is a “nurturing-intelligence-feeling” within the body, that runs the body, and we have access to that.

So, oopps, I look inside. And all of a sudden, the waves from the ocean were different, mainly in what I was hearing. The hearing shifted. And I could hear the waves differently. So my ego right away said, “Oh, look at that! Look at that! Look at how it works.”

(Me) “Ok, calm down. Let’s just look inside.”

It wasn’t difficult to stay, because I had such an existential shake-up, that for me it wasn’t difficult to just stay there peacefully. At that instant I realized what it means to be inside. It was instant. It wasn’t gradual. There was an amazing amount of – I don’t know what to call it – euphoria. Pleasure of, “Oh, ok, now I know what it means to be inside.”

All along I had it right in front of me. (laughter) I even knew how to do it. It was right in front of me. It’s simple.

(Mind) “No, no, no, no… I don’t want to do this. I want to do that (pointing away)… it’s more exciting.”

Iain: But don’t we sometimes have to exhaust what’s on the outside? It’s just the way it is, isn’t it.

Gabor: Exactly. It was all exhausted. All these other trials went bankrupt. It didn’t work.

Iain: But the whole of society is building this up for us. That’s kind of the level of what we aim for. It takes a great courageous being, or desperate being, to really say, “This is all not going to work. I have to come back here (pointing inside).” It’s very rare actually.

Gabor: Yeah. It was a very fortunate-unfortunate thing. The desperation was so big, so high - my existential shake-up – that one little look, one little touch (pointing inside) … I call it a “touch”… was enough to have this instant realization of simplicity, that’s available to me and to everyone else.

Iain: And what happened to the depression when you did that?

Gabor: Good question. The depression that I felt at that time was instantly gone. It was an instant shift. It was instantly gone. But, it has tried to come back. It has taken a mental form. It had its memory now after 12 years, “Look at that. This is how you are… and la di da di da….” So, it, like any other mental memory tried to come back, tried to come back, tried to come back. But, now I was very aware to the simplicity of the “one touch” – paying attention (pointing within). Just one small “paying attention.”

And that small effort of “paying attention” takes care of 100 depressions. Instantly you step out of the duality swing and it’s no longer in my reality. It has tried to come back and has actually trained me to go deeper and deeper and deeper into presence. Because, occasionally, it would try to come back really hard. And when something really hard happens in our life, in duality, we just have to go in… but just a little deeper, just a little deeper.

Iain: So depression actually was a catalyst for you to go even deeper inside yourself.

Gabor: Absolutely, yes.

Iain: There is a gift there somehow.

Gabor: It was a huge gift to me. Yeah. Initially it made me try to look inside, and, secondarily, when it tried to come back, it helped me go deeper and deeper and deeper – realizing the same thing deeper and deeper and deeper. There is no deeper, but it’s just an expression.

Iain: No. no. I understand that. Yes. And I guess there are so many things in so many areas in life, and I include myself in this, where something goes, what you think is wrong, or is difficult or a challenge if you like… and, of course, that in a way, as I said, is the catalyst, that’s the thing that’s unsettling. Without that you wouldn’t explore and you wouldn’t end up going deep inside, because the motivation wouldn’t be there.

Gabor: Exactly.

Iain: And people who often have fairly normal balanced lives often don’t find this pearl that you found.

Gabor: What’s really weird is … I don’t know what word to use… that the opportunities are available to everyone consistently throughout our lives. One doesn’t have to be depressed to get there. That was my path. Your personal path is your personal path. The realization is instant, but the opportunities are consistently there for us to have this self-realization, because life brings us situations, and the immediate response of the untrained mind… let’s call it that way… is to go and fix this – whatever this is. The situation comes, I go and fix it, which is the normal way to attend a problem.

The other way to do it, if someone chooses, is different. This “something” came into my reality. The universe, God, which is a lot smarter than me, put this in front of me. So why don’t I just embrace this and be with it. It will actually help me “in-body” that situation. Not “embody” but “in-body” -“IN” body. When that – whatever it is – is in my body, now it is so close to me, that I have the ability to shift it. So this “something” that came into my reality became a catalyst for me, and in turn, almost always, the situation also shifts. So a human situation could be used that way. And that way, whatever life brings us is a consistent seminar – a custom-made seminar for us, because life knows a lot better, “What sort of situation do I need to deal with?”

Iain: How did this realization change how you saw reality?

Gabor: The way I used to see reality is the way we all see reality. Now I see the exact same reality as is, except from a different context. The mind, which has been running, running, running – our mind has not been given the proper nurturing and the proper context within which it can operate properly.

Iain: So when you say, “The mind hasn’t been given proper nurturing,” explain that more… what you mean by that.

Gabor: Very hard. We call it the mind, but our attention has been hijacked by institutional fear and all kinds of things.

Gabor: Yeah. The television…whatever. So we are inundated with all that information. Our mind, our ability to function properly is totally hijacked. Even the synchronization between vision and sound has been hijacked. They tell us what sound goes with what vision. So, all this God-given ability has been totally hijacked.

So the simple “touching” (pointing within), simple inner attention, gets my mind, and your mind…everyone’s mind, to be aligned with the body. The body was here (one hand held in straight vertical line) and the mind was here (other hand wavering back and forth). Now it just simply lines up (the wavering hand slows down and lines up with the vertical hand) with the body.

Why is it good to line up with the body? Well, the body already has the innate intelligence. It’s like a mini universe. It’s a smaller fractal of the large universe out there. So why not use that intelligence? In many, many, spiritual circles the body is a “no-no” – “Oh, no. I am not the body. I’ve got to do astral travelling, and I have to step out somehow. I know I am not this. I am all that.”

It’s a half-truth statement. Yes, it’s true. But here (pointing within) is the door. We knock on the door by paying attention - using the words of Jesus. We knock on the door, paying attention, the door opens, and instantly, I feel one with everyone. Now, back to your original question - how did it affect my outlook on life? Now the mind can function properly. Instead of functioning in a hijacked fashion.

Iain: What does that mean, “The mind can function properly?”

Gabor: It means that my capability of paying attention and all the information that I have learned so far, all the information that I have made a template of in life, which is important – how to build a bridge, how to play tennis, how to do this, how to do that - all the education I’ve had created this bunch of information, put them together in a template, or in a format, or in a thought stream. The problem is that if the mind is hijacked, it’s just going to go like a loose cannon, “brrrrrr… bang, bang… oh, how about this, how about that…” So all of that wonderful information is just about useless if the mind runs like an idiot in lunatic asylum.

However, if it is placed on its foundation, where it’s supposed to be, and it is also nurtured naturally, the way it should be – now the mind is at home. First it rebels, because it’s used to operating by itself, “no, no, no” (making hand gestures of fighting). First it rebels, but then, in time, it settles into this new foundation. And now, the proper use of mind is that “I can think of whatever I want to think of.” It’s like walking into a library, calm, and I can pick up any book. Before that, I walked into that same library, and the books were attacking.

Iain: Yes. And the mind becomes your servant rather than your master somehow.

Gabor: Yeah. We can call it that way. And the mind is happy doing that, because it wasn’t quite happy being hijacked, except it got used to it.

Iain: I just want to mention something… I have these notes that came from Nurit, your wife’s book – your final and actual realizations appear on their own, rather as subtle and uneventful happenings beyond the senses and are very difficult to describe. So it was interesting when you say, “The final and actual realizations appear on their own.”

Gabor: Now, of course, we are into an area, where we don’t have the words, and so, we are attempting to use words. How I handle it is that I usually use a metaphor and then we drop it, and then I use an explanation and then we drop it. But, initially, for everyone it’s instant, because we are going beyond time. We cannot accumulate things and go in time and hope to be eventually beyond time. So it is instant. If we want to call it final, we can. Nothing is really final. It’s instant. So, when the mind gets incorporated, when it gets used to operating in this new environment…

Iain: Re-trained in a way…

Gabor: Re-trained, yeah. When the mind gets retrained, it starts with the original instant realizations. The mind starts to get retrained and there are little final, little refined realizations in between. The initial excitement, the initial honeymoon of “Oh, my God! Look at that!” kind of starts to be over. So, refinements start happening. The practical end of it starts to happen, “Oh, ok, I can incorporate that too in this peace. Oh, that too I can incorporate in that peace, and that too I can incorporate into that peace.”

So those are the final touches that are not describable until… there is nothing final… but it keeps on happening and there is a total relaxation into this possibility, into this context, knowing that the mind works just fine. Nothing that I have ever learned is lost. I don’t have any ability that I have lost. Except now, when I am walking, when I am doing anything, the mind is not talking to me. There is no conflict within me.

Iain: That’s a wonderful thing you said, “There is no conflict in you.”

Gabor: Right.

Iain: And so many of us…

Gabor: Right

Iain: The human world – we have the outer conflict and then there is the inner conflict, which, of course, contributes to the outer conflict.

Gabor: That’s the reason the world is the way it is. I call it “The open air lunatic asylum.”

Iain: Anyway. We’ve got about 10 minutes left and I want to use that time as effective as we can to find out more about your work and how you do seminars and private sessions. You free people from thought addiction, as it’s said in your notes. You protect someone from their mind, or you help them protect themselves from their mind and to know how to do that, and you help people go from a habitual thinking state to a non-thinking state, and they speak and act from a “Being” state instead.

I know you covered a little bit of it. So just talk more about - on a practical level - how that can manifest in people, where they go from this habitual thinking to a non-thinking state.

Gabor: The first thing I do… and when I say, “I do” it is a figure of speech …the first prerequisite to awakening is that a person understands that the way they have used their mind before, in an accumulative state, in accumulating information, in accumulating something to get somewhere – the way we’ve used the mind so far - is perfectly correct to use the mind that way to, say build a bridge or something like that.

Once they understand that a totally different approach has to be accepted and necessary even to try, to actually go through this - what I call “The eye of the needle”… so once a person has sufficient understanding that - “Ok. I know I don’t know how this works, but I will not be able to understand it, and if I understand it, I will misunderstand it. All the truths that I have known to be true are maybe half truths, or maybe 100% truths, but I cannot base my listening entirely upon those assumptions that I have assumed in the past.”

There are like a million assumptions out there about spirituality, which are somehow connected to awakening. So, the first prerequisite is to understand that that kind of accumulative approach with assumptions is not going to work. Once that’s understood, and at the same time we start with a personal session or with a group, a very simple thing happens. I am just sitting there “Being,” and people are looking inside. People are guided to look inside. All you have to do is “touch” (pointing inside) for a second – no expectation! So, if I say, “You are looking at me but be aware of your hand, that’s it…no expectation.” And then, “Look at me and be aware of your butt touching the chair.”

And I keep on talking… keep on talking…. And then, all of a sudden, the person gets how simple this is – that this simplicity, when the mind slows down and eventually stops, is the “It.” What I mean by “It,” is that that is the beginning of awakening. Now we can begin the awakening process. My whole explanation prior to that was coming to the simple moment so that you can please accept this simplicity. The Indians in the Amazon didn’t need to learn… didn’t need to unlearn all these things. They were just sitting there.

So then, the next “problem” that comes, the next challenge for me, is that everyone misunderstands - they think that this nice feeling that they have is like meditation. “Oh, it’s just like a meditation technique. I know. I did this before, you know.” So the mind from memory says, “Ok, this is this, and that meditation technique…” and starts comparing immediately.

So we are there, nothing else is needed, and if you can stay there, I am not even needed. But they can’t stay there, because the mind will start coming at it. “Oh, it’s just like meditation.” But, no, it is not meditation. Meditation has a beginning and an end. This is a feeling, a sensing of existence. This is a sensing of your being. When your being recognizes its own being, you will not need me, and I don’t want to call this meditation simply because this is not in time. As soon as you enter this being state – if I can call it a state – you are no longer in time.

That expression we can also take further, but we don’t want to at this point, because it’s really absolute time, but that’s another discussion.

Now, if we are staying here, the mind starts relearning to operate, “Oh there is this Being. There is this context. There is this nurturing foundation that I can use.” But the mind will come up with all kinds of comparisons and I have experienced this hundreds of times from my students… consistently. The mind has an amazing ability to come up and try to complicate this, try to compare it and put it away in the memory so it can access it later, because this feeling right now, this sensation right now, is not going to be the same five minutes from now. We can’t recall it.

So what I do do, I do with nothing. The more nothing I do, the better. I am really providing the space. I just sit there, within which, if they wish, they can stay longer and longer and longer and longer….

Iain: And that, as you say, is the beginning of awakening

Gabor: Exactly. That’s the beginning. So, unless someone starts to look inside, their awakening has not started yet.

Iain: Ok. I want to ask you one more thing before we finish: what’s it like for you to be a master of silence?

Gabor: Well, I wish I didn’t have to be called anything. To operate in this dimension we have to be called a something. So, a friend of mine called me in Hungarian a “Csendmester,” which means “Master of Silence,” and it kind of stuck. To operate as such, my life is not any different than anybody else’s. My life is exactly the same. I no longer get excited about a profitable idea as much as before. My responses to things are very different, but I see the world as is. I don’t see things and people and situations through the old bias I used to see through.

The normal mind looks at the world and says, “Ok, what filter do I bring in to look through? Iain McNay, British, friendly, nice guy…” You know, I mean there is a filter of looking. While now, I just look at the way it is.

Iain: … the way it is.

Gabor: The way it is. If I see anger, it’s anger. It’s not like I don’t see anger. It’s not like I see the world through pink glasses at all. Just the way it is! But coming from this nurturing foundation, looking out from this nurtured foundation, even the so called “ugliness” – ugly is still ugly, misbehavior is still misbehavior, but there is no judgement or reaction at all. There is not even “no judgement.” There is just… love. If I happen to be close to a reaction to something, I just (takes a breath inside) go a little bit deeper.

Iain: And that’s the key, isn’t it. I think that’s where you’ve been going right from the start… a little bit deeper into your journey. And that’s the journey. It’s ongoing.

Gabor: Right. Yes. It’s ongoing this way (pointing within)

Iain: Ok. I guess this is a great place to finish. Ongoing journey…

Gabor: This way (pointing within).

Iain: This way (pointing within). I am going to actually show Nurit’s book, your wife’s book, because it has a lot about your story.

Gabor: Yes.

Iain: This book – “The Blind Leading the Blonde on the Road to Freedom: Confessions of a Recovering Spiritual Junkie” – is written by Nurit Oren, whom I am actually interviewing next, but the reason I am showing it now is because it also has Gabor’s story in there and some conversations between Nurit and Gabor. So you might like to find this book if you are pulled towards Gabor’s journey and are intrigued by what he had to say.

Thank you very much Gabor, for coming on to Conscious TV all the way from Budapest, Hungary. It is very much appreciated. And thank you everyone out there for watching Conscious TV and I hope we see you again soon. Good-bye.